Design management

Definitions and contexts

Design management is the business side
of design
 What is Design Management?
Design management encompasses the ongoing processes, business
decisions, and strategies that enable innovation and create effectively-
designed products, services, communications, environments, and
brands that enhance our quality of life and provide organizational
success.
 What is Design Management?

Design management is the business side of design. Design

management encompasses the ongoing processes, business decisions,
and strategies that enable innovation and create effectively-designed
products, services, communications, environments, and brands that
enhance our quality of life and provide organizational success.
 What is Design Management?

Design management seeks to link design, innovation, technology,

management and customers to provide competitive advantage across
the triple bottom line: economic, social/cultural, and environmental
factors. It is the art and science of empowering design to enhance
collaboration and synergy between “design” and “business” to
improve design effectiveness.
 What is Design Management?

The scope of design management ranges from the tactical

management of corporate design functions and design agencies,
including design operations, staff, methods and processes—to the
strategic advocacy of design across the organization as a key
differentiator and driver of organizational success. It includes the use
of design thinking—or using design processes to solve general
business problems.
 What is Design Management?

Traditionally, design management was seen as limited to the

management of design projects, but over time, it evolved to include
other aspects of an organisation at the functional and strategic level. A
more recent debate concerns the integration of design thinking into
strategic management as a cross-disciplinary and human-centred
approach to management.
 What is Design Management?

Some examples of professionals that practice design management

include design department managers, brand managers, creative
directors, design directors, heads of design, design strategists, and
design researchers, as well as managers and executives responsible for
making decisions about how design is used in the organization.
 What is Design Management?

Design Management is the management of design projects, team and

processes and is an intricate subject area. Currently, organisations all over
the world are increasingly looking for ways to employ the power of design
in product innovation, in every day management processes, and in the
creative development of their companies. When design effectively and
creatively engages with business agendas, the results are of benefit to
people, products, processes and organisational cultures as a whole.
What is Design Management?
 Other definitions:
Design management is the effective deployment by
line managers of the design resources available to an
organization in the pursuance of its corporate objectives.
It is therefore directly concerned with the organizational
place of design, with the identification with specific
design disciplines which are relevant to the resolution of
key management issues, and with the training of
managers to use design effectively.

— Peter Gorb
 Other definitions:
Design management is a complex and multi-
faceted activity that goes right to the heart of what
a company is or does [...] it is not something
susceptible to pat formulas, a few bullet points or a
manual. Every company's structure and internal
culture is different; design management is no
exception. But the fact that every firm is different
does not diminish the importance of managing
design tightly and effectively.

— John Thackara
Related Terms

Design
Management
Design Leadership
Related Terms

Design
▪ In design, there are strong differentiations between theory and
practice. The fluid nature of the theory allows the designer to
operate without being constrained by a rigid structure. In practice,
decisions are often referred to as intuition.
▪ Gorb divided design into three different classes. Design
management operates in and across all three classes: product
(e.g. industrial design, packaging design, service design),
information (e.g. graphic design, branding, media design, web
design), and environment (e.g. retail design, exhibition design,
interior design).
Related Terms
Management
▪ Management in all business and organizational activities is the act
of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and
objectives efficiently and effectively. Management comprises
planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling
an organization (a group of one or more people or entities), or
effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal.
Related Terms
Management
Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to
consist of six separate branches, namely :
▪ Human Resources management.
▪ Operation Management (or production management).
▪ Strategic Management.
▪ Marketing Management.
▪ Financial Management.
▪ Information Management, which was responsible
for management information systems.
Related Terms
Management
Design management overlaps mainly with the branches:

▪ Marketing management.
▪ Operation management.
▪ Strategic management.
Related Terms
Design Leadership
▪ Design managers often operate in the area of design leadership;
however, design management and design leadership are
interdependent rather than interchangeable. Like management
and leadership, they differ in their objectives, achievements of
objectives, accomplishments, and outcomes. Design leadership
leads from creation of a vision to changes, innovations, and
implementation of creative solutions.
Related Terms
Design Leadership
▪ Design leadership leads from creation of a vision to changes,
innovations, and implementation of creative solutions. It
stimulates communication and collaboration through motivation,
sets ambitions, and points out future directions to achieve long-
term objectives.
▪ In contrast, design management is reactive and responds to a
given business situation by using specific skills, tools, methods,
and techniques. Design management requires design leadership
to know where to go and design leadership requires design
management to know how to get there.
Design management objectives:

▪ Develop and maintain an efficient business environment in which

an organization can achieve its strategic and mission goals through
design.

▪ Encompasses the ongoing processes, business decisions, and

strategies that enable innovation and create effectively-designed
products, services, communications, environments, and brands
that enhance our quality of life and provide organizational
success.
 What is the design manager?

A Design Manager is someone who manages all the processes in relation

to producing a set of drawings that a product can be produced from. They
are also known as Design Coordinators or Design and Production
Managers. This can be a challenging and highly satisfying role with the
manager playing a key part in the success of a product project.

They are highly motivated, professional individuals and are asked to use
their organisational skills to bring together financial coordinators,
production engineers and marketers, along with specialist designers, with
the aim of producing a coordinated design.
 What does a Design Manager do?
Their work involves:

▪ Managing a design team.

▪ Managing the design process.
▪ Supporting, understanding and advising the client as to the requirements and his/her
obligations in the development of a product design.
▪ Encouraging and inspiring design consultants to produce their best work using their
full flair, experience, resources and talents in a cost-effective way.
 What makes a good Design Manager?
▪ Design Managers must be good forward planners and excellent motivators as they
must manage large teams with different goals to enable them to work together to
produce a coordinated and coherent design.

▪ They need to be able to keep cool under pressure.

▪ They need good people skills; the ability present their ideas effectively and to be able
to evaluate the ideas of others whilst in meetings.

▪ They need an in-depth knowledge of all aspects of a construction project and be

efficient document managers.
 Tutorial 1
In the light of the design manager tasks, Please select a known company such as
CocaCola, Pepsi, or Vodafone and create a mind map that shows the roles of a design
manager in the company.

Please use a plain thick paper size 35x50 cm.

The mind map should be finished in the section.